Sunshine

`Sunshine' is a forceful and wonderful film that follows four generations of a Jewish Hungarian family through seventy tumultuous years of Hungarian history. The story is extremely well done with rich finely etched characters. The screenplay is better suited for a miniseries than a three hour film simply because there is so much material to cover. Three hours is both too long and too short; the story is emotionally exhausting making it too long for one sitting, yet the total length is not long enough to do the subject matter justice.

Hungarian Writer/Director Istvan Szabo captures Hungary's turbulent transition from empire to fascist state to soviet satellite weaving the history of the times into the lives of this extraordinary family. He puts a human face on the historical facts giving us a disturbingly real look at what it might have been like to live through it, especially from the Jewish perspective.

Despite a whirlwind pace that requires years to be spanned in minutes, Szabo manages to conjure deep and insightful character studies of the members of each generation. His period renderings are exquisite from costumes to props to locations. This is a wonderfully textured presentation with history layered over the human stories, addressing the many indignities suffered by Jews in Hungary during the period, and the many concessions made to merely stay alive. It is a story that contains both triumph and tragedy, presented with amazing candor.

Ralph Fiennes gives three incredible performances as the grandfather, father and son of the patriarchy. Szabo has endured criticism for casting the same actor in three roles, but in this case it is an excellent choice. Fiennes is a versatile artist and personalizes three radically different characters, slipping on their personalities like a glove. He loses himself in each, rendering them all passionately but appropriately based on the motivations established in Szabo's careful character development. With Szabo's guidance, it is clear that Fiennes has an inherent understanding of the psyche of his three characters and plays them with believable nuance.

Two different actresses play Valerie and each is splendid. Jennifer Ehle plays the young Valerie and endows her with ardor and vivacity. She establishes Valerie as the strongest continuing character in the film, providing linkage between the past and the present. In another stroke of casting brilliance, Szabo selects Ehle's real life mother, Rosemary Harris as the elder Valerie. The clear resemblance linked with Harris' magnetic performance adds fullness to Valerie's later years. William Hurt and James Frain lead an ensemble of strong supporting actors that give the film great intensity and depth of talent.

This thoughtful and emotionally provocative character study is engrossing and compelling. I rated it a 9/10 only because I wish Szabo would have gone deeper and divided it into two or three installments. On a dramatic and artistic level, this film is first rate.

The great elements of Sunshine for me far outweighed the negative ones. I admit a few things: I would like to have seen the ending be Sors III's speech at Knorr's funeral (and the f*** you against the officer), then the scene of him walking down the alley with that final monologue. That would have left a far more memorabel mark, but the way the ending was done was too far extended. The first forty minutes also seem such weak costume drama compared to the intensity of the next two hours that they should have been vigorously cut. Third, the sex scenes- why so repetitive and abrupt? I love seeing Rachel Weisz (The Mummy) and Deborah Kara Unger (Crash) in ecstasy as much as anyone, but it got to be almost boring. Fourth- the music and cinematography seemed rather dull.

However, once we get past these flaws, Sunshine is a great, powerful work about dignity and how we value ourselves within a society that rejects us. I am an American Irish Catholic, so I have not felt the oppression of minorities, thankfully, nor have the last few generations of my family.

I thank Mr. Fiennes and Szabo for showing how each one of the Sonnenschein men struggle for dignity and purpose within the system, yet they fail each time to give joy primacy in their lives. Every time, the system they so revere would put people second and ideology first (read review of Michael Collins.) Valery knew the value of seeking joy, and thankfully she passes that on to her grandson, who survived the utter misery of the Stalinist regime.

This film shows such brutality at one moment that I cracked open in the theater (those who have seen the film know the moment I refer to.) However, I did not find it excessive- rather it was absolutely essential to showing the depths of the personal horror that the Sors went through in the Holocaust. As Knorr says, "Surviving Aushwitz does not make you a bigger or a greater man. It only gets burned into your brain." The film does not expertly reveal relationships between men and women, besides Valery and Ignatz's tryst, but I felt it detailed the faults and promises of each political regime very well, based on what I've read.

Fiennes should get another Oscar nod for this, as should Rosemary Harris for best supporting actress. What infuriates me is that Sunshine will never get to the major theatres, the way we're now measuring films like they were race horses instead of creative efforts. I don't know why it is we now feel only the most simple, light, corny and action-crammed films can go into the multiplexes (albeit many of those films good ones.) This is great, provocative entertainment worth spreading around. Like American History X, Sunshine certainly has its faults, but its messages about tolerance, humanity, and redemption are glorious.

We just rented the DVD of this, without any prior knowledge of the story, and took it just on the strength of the major players. It was very beautifully filmed, and the entire cast was believable. Fiennes gave a stellar performance as three members of the family. The history of the terrible times and the emotional traumas was heart breaking. We are old enough to remember much of wartimes portrayed, and can only feel great pain in seeing what is happening in this year 2002, during a time when our present administration is "saber-rattling" and trying to convince the public that war is the only answer. After viewing this we looked into Maltin's latest 2003 movie guide, and were aghast at his first sentence:"Ambitious, but trite, rambling soap opera chronicaling a Hungarian Jewish family over three generations". This is like saying "Gone with the Wind" is about a silly girl who makes a gown out of draperies!!

Now I am sorry that I missed to see this film on a big movie screen. Beautiful cinematography, great story and excellent performances. During watching the movie, being Hungarian, I kept asking myself: A complete, intriguing story - but is it as appealing to people from other countries, particularly outside Europe as it is for me to watch my country's history throughout the 19th and 20th century? I was pleasantly surprised and flattered that people from Colombia or New Zealand have found interest in the history of this small nation although, considering the length of it as well as the fact that this tale is limited to follow a story of one small country, I can understand the reviewers who found it boring. But then again the fact that the story is being taken place in Hungary is only one side of the coin and the rest of the strong messages can be applied to any people in any nations.

This historical epic/family drama from the master of Hungarian cinema, Istvan Szabo (Mephisto, 1981; Being Julia, 2004) is a wonderful and memorable film that has been overlooked, underrated and sadly under-seen.

This is a moving and always engrossing drama about one Jewish-Hungarian family that rises and falls throughout the 20th century. Ralph Fiennes is outstanding as the grandfather, the father and the grandson. All three - complex and tragic characters, victims of their times, politics and wars. I think it was a brilliant idea to cast one actor as a face of three generations of one family. If ever anyone attempts to adapt Marquez's "One Hundreds Years of Solitude", that's how it should be done, IMO.

"Sunshine" is three hours long but never for a minute had I felt it was too long or it was losing its power. It is a serious, thought-provoking film which is also a superb work of art.

9.5/10